Open a PDF from Gmail so it opens in Adobe Acrobat.
Last updated on
Mar 11, 2026
Manage automatic PDF opening behavior for Gmail and Google Drive in Adobe Acrobat.
If you’ve installed the Adobe Acrobat extension for Chrome, PDFs opened from Gmail and Google Drive may open automatically in Adobe Acrobat. This behavior applies when viewing PDFs in Chrome. You can turn off automatic PDF opening if you prefer to use Gmail or Google Drive’s default viewer and turn it back on later if you want PDFs to open in Acrobat by default.
Turn off PDFs from Gmail opening automatically in Acrobat
Select More options in the Acrobat viewer.
Turn off the Open PDFs from Gmail in Acrobat toggle.
Turn on PDFs opening automatically in Acrobat again
You can re‑enable this in two ways.
Turn on from Acrobat (recommended)
In Gmail, select a PDF link.
Select Adobe Acrobat to open the PDF in Acrobat.
Select More options in the Acrobat viewer.
Turn on the toggle for Open PDFs from Gmail in Acrobat.
PDFs from Gmail will now open automatically in Acrobat.
Turn on from Chrome settings
Use this option if you want to manage default behavior outside Gmail or enable it for Google Drive.
In Chrome, select the three-dot menu
Go to Extensions > Manage extensions.
Select Details for Adobe Acrobat: PDF edit, convert, sign tools.
Select Extension options.
Turn on default view options for:
- Gmail
- Google Drive
Select Save preferences.
PDFs from Gmail and Google Drive will now open automatically in Acrobat.
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